In terms of the Throwaway passage that I have been using as an example, some of the questions regarding annotation would apply in print or in a digital format. But others apply mainly to a digital presentation, or take on different connotations on the screen.
| Is there a line between information and interpretation? If so, how do we proceed in order not to cross it? If not, how do we construct annotations? |
In one sense, any annotation is interpretation. Even if the information is completely factual (historically, there was a Gold Cup race run at Ascot in England on June 16, 1904), the decision to provide the annotation involves an interpretation regarding what matters in the text of Ulysses. Of the existing annotations to the Throwaway passage, Jeri Johnson's* stays most strictly at what might be called a factual level. The first Don Gifford* annotation to some extent, and the second one to a much greater degree, move into the realm of interpretation by deciding, or assuming, that telling readers information that they won't encounter in the book for hundreds of pages is an acceptable practice. Declan Kiberd's* note rests at the other extreme on the fact-interpretation scale from Johnson's: it seems to exist mainly to provide the annotator's interpretation of the passage.
We are constructing the annotations to the hypermedia Ulysses so that the ones at the first level come close to Johnson's practice. Annotations aimed at advanced readers can adopt procedures like Gifford's, and eventually the annotations become fully interpretive. However, digital presentation does not need to remain single-voiced in the way a print book usually is, and so whenever an interpretation appears, a conflicting or complementary one, or one simply in a different voice, can also appear. Readers can choose to close off all interpretations except one, but the default position will be that Ulysses can be interpreted in many ways and in many voices and not by a single "authority."
And then there are passages that can't be discussed at all except at the level of interpretation.
|
Screens in This Section
|
6
|
|
Sections
|